This FAO Fisheries Technical Paper has been compiled to
complement the discussions of its companion volume: Case Studies on the
Allocation of Transferable Quota Rights in Fisheries
Management[1]. It thus provides a third volume of
case studies on fisheries management practices published by FAO, which started
with the collection of papers describing the management of elasmobranch
fisheries[2]. Further, it continues the series of
publications on the use of Rights-based fisheries management undertaken by
FAOs Fisheries Department, which, together with the publication of this
volume brings these publications to six in
total[3]. These reflect the growing importance of
this topic to contemporary fisheries management.

The topic selected for this study, as with that for its
companion volume, the Allocation of Transferable Quota Rights in Fisheries
Management, arose from my oft-encountered experience when discussing this issue
with fishermen and other stakeholders in the fishing industry.
Uppermost in the minds of fishermen facing this possible form of management is
How much quota will I get? Immediately this question is resolved (of
course providing an answer is never a trivial exercise!), the next most frequent
question, What is there to stop someone buying up all the quota and
forming a monopoly? Less frequent has been the question from
administrators, Will introducing transferable fishing quota into the
fishery solve the fleet overcapacity problems? Never heard from fishermen
is a question, which I have always thought was emminently reasonable: Will
there be any constraints on my rights to sell my quota holdings, for example, to
whoever I wish?

One common response I have encountered from fishermen (which
would perplex a strictly utility-maximizing economist) is that they do not think
access to the fisheries they exploit should even be limited, though no such
views on open-access existed, for example, in relation to their farms or
woodlots whose potential harvests were obviously governed by a different
cognitive rationality.

Another reason for compiling these case studies was to provide
a factual basis for evaluating the claims, commonly made, that introducing
individual transferable quotas (ITQs) leads to monopolies and the exclusion of
small operators from fisheries. Often, these claims are made with little or no
substantiation and in journals whose editors and referees should know better. In
any event, the papers in this volume should partly remove the excuse for such
non-substantiated claims. I say partly remove because what many of
the papers show is the great difficulty in accurately identifying what happens
in terms of fleet-capacity when a transferable rights-based management approach
is adopted.

Much of what happens to the fleet depends on factors not
directly associated with the fishery undergoing the management change. A further
complication in determining whether all of the changes that occur in a fisheries
after the introduction of a Rights-based Management system are the result of the
new management regime is practically impossible. Fisheries, despite the
suggestions of those who promote experimental adaptive management and because of
their social and biological complexity, are too important to administer as an
academic experiment. Demand changes, supply changes, resource productivity
changes (with consequential changes in operators revenues), changes in
factor costs (which usually only rise), superimposed on the business cycle and
consumer product-substitution, make unequivocal conclusions about the effects of
a particular management regime change a rarity. While some changes may be
unequivocally attributed to a new rights-based management regime, many others,
particularly those relating to efficiency, will not. However, it is clear is
that without monitoring, or at least good documentation, of both the pre - and
post-management situations, unequivocal assertions (positive or negative) about
the effects of transferable fishing - rights, when based on subjective and
personal values, can be dangerously misleading.

While the interest of FAOs Fisheries Department in the
costs and benefits of introducing rights-based approaches to fisheries
management was a major stimulus for undertaking the compilation and publication
of these papers, there was another compelling reason to address this topic. The
twenty-second Session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI), held in 1997,
had urged that the issues of excessive fishing-capacity and fishing-effort
leading to overfishing should be given consideration by FAO. As a consequence
the Fisheries Department organized a technical working group to review technical
guidelines and consider an international plan of action for the management of
fishing-capacity. As part of the process of addressing this issue much work was
focused on how to determine the capacity of fishing fleets and
detailed actions were identified as to how individual countries could address
this issue.

Perplexingly, little or no detailed consideration was given to
the role that rights-based approaches to fisheries management might provide in
reducing fleet-capacity, though some countries reported at the twenty-third
Session of COFI that individual transferable quotas were being used to reduce or
prevent increases in fishing-capacity. By undertaking the documentation of
experiences at the national and fishery level I hope this collection of case
studies will provide a factual basis on which to consider rights-based
management approaches as a possible solution for solving problems of excess
fishing capacity. Indeed, in my view, for many of the cases examined, a
rights-based approach will provide the most practical remedy to the problems
that exist, and at the same time will contribute to other desirable management
objectives.

As those involved in managing fisheries are aware, day-to-day
exigencies rarely allow the luxury of collecting detailed data that will permit
the proper evaluation of new programmes (much less their soon-to-be-replaced
predecessors) and, as the papers in this volume show, this situation has been
the norm. Yet further, characterizing the capacity of a fishing
fleet is a complex and difficult[4], if not
fruitless, task. And, rarely have the authors had access to the detailed
fleet-registry records that provide sufficient details on year of vessel
construction, dates of vessel conversions or upgrades, design changes, engine
upgrades, etc., all of which change the fishing capacity of individual
vessels and thus the total for the fleet. As has been well
documented[5], statistics based on aggregate
fleet statistics can be meaningless in trying to predict the changes that may
occur when individual vessels enter or leave a fishing fleet. These vessels
usually are the statistical outliers - those from the lower tail of the
distribution of fishing success for vessels of similar dimensions. Not
surprisingly, the challenge of obtaining these detailed data has proven
difficult for many of the studies and authors have often been forced to rely on
other approaches.

Of great interest will be the accounts that relate to
fisheries where the measure of effort has not been most appropriately a number
of fishing vessels or a corresponding proxy. Transferable quotas have also been
introduced into other fisheries such as those for abalone where the effort is
indicated by the number of divers. Readers should be interested to read of the
experiences in these fisheries, which are most notably found in
Australia.

The challenge of discerning overall or sectoral trends from
the information provided in these papers is left to the reader. But, so diverse
are the fisheries that now use transferable quotas as a management tool, that no
longer can writers be excused for making simplistic assertions based on
poorly-conceived and subjective opinions derived from one or two examples of
such management. Such analysis ought be fisheries-specific and based on
sector-based examination. Enabling this is one of the objectives of this
Technical Paper.

The contributing authors were asked to follow a common format
so as to facilitate comparative analysis of different practices. But, at the
same time they were asked not to let this request limit their treatment of the
topic. I emphasized that I would rather receive an appropriate treatment of the
topic justified in terms of the problems of the unique fishery they were
describing, than an account that was limited by attempting to follow my
suggested structure of the paper. Readers must understand the various conceptual
elements that were involved and interpret for themselves the individual accounts
in this light.

Observant readers of the companion volume, Case Studies on the
Allocation of Transferable Quota Rights in Fisheries (FAO Fish. Tech. Pap. No.
411), will note that some fisheries covered in that volume have, for various
reasons, not been addressed in this volume. Among these lacunae is that for the
South East Fishery of Australia. However, I can direct interested readers to a
recent publication, Indicators of the effectiveness of quota markets: the
South East Trawl Fishery of Australia, in Volume 52(4) of, Marine and
Freshwater Research. This paper by Robin Connor and Dave Alden should
provide much of the information about that fishery, which this volume attempts
to address in other fisheries.

Once again, I must thank my secretary,
Marie-Thérèse Magnan, for her enormous effort in preparing
this paper for publication - her fourth in this series; my colleague, Mike
Mann, in ensuring that the editorial quality of the papers is again of the
highest standard, and Françoise Schatto, Publication Assistant,
Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit for the difficult and unenviable
responsibility of transforming the manuscript into the final document. I also
thank those who have generously made photographs available, usually to
illustrate a paper that is not their own - I believe that these illustrations
have done much to bring these reports to life. Credit for the design
and preparation of the cover goes entirely to Emanuela DAntoni of
our Service.